Boulder moves to expand 'living wage' program for city workers

City also looks to bring paramedics in-house

The Boulder City Council on Tuesday night voiced support for increasing the wages of seasonal and other "nonstandard" city employees.

Last summer, the council gave direction that the minimum wage for all full-time, part-time and temporary city employees should be bumped to $15.67.

Not included among those workers are people performing "nonstandard" roles for Boulder, such as junior park rangers, camp counselors and those generally hired on seasonal or demand-based terms.

During Tuesday night's study session, the council stopped short of moving these roughly 700 employees up to the $15.67 floor applied to other employees. Doing so would add about $2 million to the city's budget — nearly eight times the amount Boulder will spend by the end of 2017 to bring all "standard" employees up to the new minimum wage.

City staff recommended against moving "nonstandard" workers up to $15.67. Yvette Bowden, the city's director of Parks and Recreation, mentioned that taking such action could result in other city employees raising issues of fairness after seeing $2 million committed to raises elsewhere in the municipal workforce.

Council members seemed to disagree that this should be a consideration.

Advertisement

"Increasing the wages of the people at the bottom — does that really affect the people at the top?" Councilwoman Lisa Morzel said. "I think what we're trying to do is get a living wage, and those people at the top are already getting a living wage."

But the council did indicate a desire to raise the "nonstandard" wages, perhaps by a phased approach that brings those workers up to the $12 statewide minimum that Colorado voters approved in November. Amendment 70's passage means that the current minimum of $8.31 will be scaled up to $12 by 2020.

"We could look at accelerating the journey to $12 that we know all these folks are going to be at," Councilman Aaron Brockett said. "We might look at making that a little sooner (than 2020)."

"Nonstandard" jobs are currently advertised by the city at wages as low as $9.30 per hour, though some of those positions carry pay rates at or above the $12 mark the council discussed Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the council agreed with a staff recommendation to maintain the $15.67 mark approved last year, and to consider changes to that minimum every three or four years as the statewide "Self-Sufficiency Standard" is recalculated.

This standard is determined based on averages of local factors such as costs of housing, child care, taxes, food, health care and transportation.

While the council, collectively, was comfortable updating this mark every few years, Councilman Matt Appelbaum suggested the standard is somewhat arbitrary.

"This is just some average of averages," he said. "But if it makes you feel good that (Boulder's minimum wage) is based on something, fine. I don't care."

Last year, the council discussed potentially moving custodial contract workers into the city workforce. The group agreed Tuesday to continue contracting with them, but at a higher rate than Boulder used to pay. Amended custodial contracts for 2017 have the city paying $132,000 more than it did in 2016.

Contracts for landscaping and emergency medical services work were also increased, by respective totals of $71,000 and $535,000.

The council also was strongly supportive of a plan to move emergency medical services workers — who are paid very little and tend to have high employee turnover as a result — into the fold of Boulder's fire department.

Nothing, including that idea, was formally approved at the study session. But the council did appear confident that having paramedics in the city workforce was worth the projected $4,689,000 it would cost Boulder over four years to develop its own ambulance service in-house.

Fire trucks have basic equipment to provide life support, but the ambulances that carry advanced life support equipment (and highly-trained paramedics) often lag behind in response time.

Advanced life support arrival times average about 8 minutes today, Boulder Fire Chief Michael Calderazzo said, adding that 6 minutes would be a more appropriate target for getting "the E.R. to your door" faster.

About three-quarters of calls to the fire department concern medical incidents or car crashes, Calderazzo said, and the council agreed that high rate of usage is one reason it makes sense to make them city employees.

"We're saving money today by (contracting), but our service level is nowhere near where it could be," Calderazzo said. "Yes, it'll cost a little more, but we think this is better for the citizens of Boulder."

The Boulder alt-country band gives its EPs names such as Death and Resurrection, and its songs bear the mark of hard truths and sin. But the punk energy behind the playing, and the sense that it's all in good fun, make it OK to dance to a song like "Death." Full Story